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Brian Wilson, the legendary founder of the Beach Boys, has died
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Wilson’s family said in a statement they are “sharing our grief with the world”
Brian Wilson, the pop music genius and singer who co-founded the Beach Boys, has died. He was 82.
The musician’s family announced his death on Wednesday, June 11 in an Instagram post featuring a recent photo of the star smiling on a bench.
“We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away,” the statement read. “We are at a loss for words right now. Please respect our privacy at this time as our family is grieving. We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world. Love & Mercy.”
Described by PEOPLE in 1975 as the “formative genius of the group,” Wilson served as the rock band’s songwriter and co-lead vocalist and also played bass guitar and keyboard alongside brothers, Dennis and Carl Wilson, cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine, who all were part of the original lineup.
Born on June 20, 1942 in Inglewood, Calif., Wilson was the eldest child among his siblings, including Dennis and Carl, who were born in 1944 and 1946, respectively. From an early age, he was said to have an aptitude for music, with two biographies — Inside the Music of Brian Wilson: The Songs, Sounds, and Influences of the Beach Boys’ Founding Genius and Wouldn’t It Be Nice: Brian Wilson and the Making of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds — detailing his abilities with pitch and melody.
At age 19, Wilson — along with his brothers, Love and Jardine — formed the Beach Boys, which was initially known as the Pendletones, and co-wrote the group’s first song, “Surfin’.” By 1962, they released their first studio album, Surfin’ Safari. And with the success of their sophomore effort, Surfin’ U.S.A., and two subsequent albums also released in 1963, they helped cultivate — and became synonymous with — the “California sound.”
A few years later, Wilson helped the group expand beyond that surf and beach culture with more mature music, culminating in 1966’s Pet Sounds, 1967’s scrapped effort, Smile, and the single “Good Vibrations.” The first is what eventually cemented Wilson and the Beach Boys’ place in rock ‘n’ roll history, with the album going on to become one of the most influential of all time.
When it comes to “Good Vibrations,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966, Wilson told PEOPLE in 2018, “That was a very complex record.”
He added, “We cut that in four studios. The verses at Gold Star, the bridge at Sunset Sound, the background music for the choruses at Western, and the vocals at Columbia. My brothers said, ‘Brian, this is going to be a No. 1 record.’ I said, ‘I know!’ “
Related: The Beach Boys in Their Own Words: America’s Band Tells the Tales Behind Their Pop Masterpieces
Despite the Beach Boys’ soaring popularity and continued success on the charts, Wilson started to succumb to various mental instabilities brought on by depression over deafness in his right ear, an unofficial musical rivalry with the Beatles, the relentless nature of being on tour and what PEOPLE described later, in 1975, as “the excesses of the ’60s,” Wilson became a “victim of his own genius.” Years later, after continued mental decline and increased self-destructive behavior, he went into reclusion after his father’s death in June 1973.
In 1991, Wilson told PEOPLE his father’s abuse and a “two-by-four [he hit him with] caused deafness in my right ear,” adding that his ”childhood and adolescence were very sad times in my life, because I always had to turn my head to hear things, trying to imagine where those voices were coming from.”
With the help of psychologist Eugene Landy, Wilson eventually made a brief comeback in 1976, helping produce the album, The Beach Boys Love You, before falling back into another years-long depression fueled by drugs and alcohol.
After he “became obese and withdrawn in the 70s,” PEOPLE wrote in 1983, Wilson “put his piano inside a huge indoor sandbox and for one two-year period never ventured out of the house.” But after a second intervention led by Landy, “the 40-year-old singer-songwriter-producer has kicked booze and a three-pack-a-day cigarette habit, and is sticking to a regimen that has peeled 100 pounds off his 6’2″ frame.”
“I’ve been through a great deal of mental anguish,” Wilson told PEOPLE. “I felt like a fat slob. It was very embarrassing. I used to go onstage and it was scary. Now I’m getting used to it. I feel a little more confidence in myself.” He added that through therapy, “I had to learn to get off a lot of bad stuff.”
By the mid-1990s, Wilson embarked on a career resurgence, which saw him going back into the studio and performing onstage again. He released several solo albums during that time, including 2004’s Brian Wilson Presents Smile, which was his version of the previously uncompleted Beach Boys’ record.
In 2012, he released his 11th solo album, At My Piano, the same year the Beach Boys performed at the 54th annual Grammy Awards, capping off a successful 50th anniversary tour and celebrated release of the album, That’s Why God Made the Radio.
“I feel good. I really do feel good these days,” Wilson told PEOPLE, adding that “this whole year has been very emotional and — what do you call that word? — sentimental.”
Throughout his career, Wilson received a number of accolades. He earned nine Grammy Award nominations, collecting most of those early on with the Beach Boys. His two wins, however, were for his solo work in 2005 and 2013.
As a member of the Beach Boys, he was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. He was also recognized by the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007 and earned a Golden Globe nomination in 2016 for writing an original song featured on the soundtrack of the biopic, Love & Mercy, starring Paul Dano as Wilson.
Wilson’s life and career was subsequently chronicled in the 2021 documentary, Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road.
Related: The Members of the Beach Boys: Where Are They Now?
During all of this, Wilson was married twice, first to Marilyn Rovell, from 1964 to 1979, and then to Melinda Kae Ledbetter, whom he married in 1995. They were together until her death in January 2024.
A month later his family filed for a conservatorship in a Los Angeles court stating that he had a “major neurocognitive disorder (such as dementia).” They also noted that Wilson was “unable to properly provide for his… personal needs for physical health, food, clothing, or shelter.”
Wilson had two daughters, Carnie and Wendy, born in 1968 and 1969 respectively with his first wife. In the 1980s the siblings formed the chart-topping girl group, Wilson Phillips, with Chynna Phillips, the daughter of John and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas.
With Ledbetter, Wilson adopted five children: Daria, Delanie, Dylan, Dash and Dakota Rose. “They’re good kids,” the singer told PEOPLE in December 2012.
Wilson is survived by his children.
Read the original article on People
The post Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys Co-Founder and Singer, Dies at 82 appeared first on People.
